Private and for your own eye.
My dear Major: I send my son to meet you at Judge Overton’s and to conduct you and your lady with our other friends to the Hermitage, where you will receive that heartfelt welcome that you were ever wont to receive when my dear departed wife was living. Her absence makes everything here wear to me a gloomy and melancholy aspect, but the presence of her old and sincere friend will cheer me amidst the melancholy gloom with which I am surrounded.
My neighbors and connections will receive you and your lady with that good feeling that is due to you, and I request you and your lady will meet them with your usual courtesy, which is so well calculated to gain universal applause even from enemies and the united approbation of all friends. Our enemies calculate much upon injuring me by raising the cry that I forced Mr. A. J. Donelson from me and compelled him to retire because he would not yield to my views, which they call improper. I mean to be able to shew that I only claimed to rule my household, that it should extend justice and common politeness to all and no more, and thus put my enemies in the wrong; and if any friends desert me, then it is theirs not my fault.
General Coffee has, since here, produced a visible and sensible change in my connections and they will all be here to receive you and your lady who I trust will receive them with her usual courtesy and if a perfect reconciliation can not take place that harmony may prevail and a link broken in the Nashville conspiracy. I trust you are aware that I will never abandon you or separate from you so long as you continue to practice those virtues that have always accompanied you, nor would I ask you or your friend to pursue a course to compromise or be degrading to themselves or feelings; but I am anxious that we pursue such a course as will break down the Nashville combination, which I view as the sprouts of the Washington conspiracy.
Under these more or less auspicious circumstances the Eatons came to the Hermitage, where nothing was left undone to make them feel that they were just as welcome as any other guest that ever crossed the threshold of the old house. The Donelsons were there, taking part in the reception of the guests, Mrs. Donelson the very essence of punctilious and cordial hospitality—although she probably had her enthusiasm well under control. Pretty Peggy Eaton was no fool; she must have known of the cajoling it had required to prepare the way for her reception at the Hermitage; and, although she was spiteful enough to relish the concealed discomfiture of the Donelsons, it was probably a relief to her and to everybody else (except perhaps Old Hickory himself) when the party was over and the Eatons had to go.
Mrs. Eaton in her old age sat down and wrote a rambling sort of autobiography, in the course of which she told of this visit to the Hermitage—although nowhere in her reminiscences does she mention the Donelsons, whom she so cordially hated. The dinner at the Hermitage in her honor, she relates, was a splendid occasion, with the General doing the honors with great gusto and making jokes with the guests over the carving of a barbecued pig which was one of the features of the dinner. The General also distinguished himself as a host by passing the bread himself, which was his way of making everybody feel at home. After dinner, however, the master of the Hermitage disappeared; and then it was that Mrs. Eaton, sent by her husband to look for him, found him kneeling by Rachel’s grave in the garden with the tears streaming down his face. Recalling to him his duties as a host she persuaded him to return to the house, where he again donned his mask of gaiety and entered into the hilarity of the guests assembled there.
Writing of the Presidential campaign of 1824, Parton says: “The Hermitage was more like a hotel than a home during the summer, so numerous were the guests whom curiosity, friendship or political business brought to it.” And an old lady in Nashville told Parton that she had often been at the Hermitage in those simple old times when there was in each of the four available rooms not merely a guest but a family, while the young men and solitary travelers who chanced to drop in disposed of themselves on the piazza or any other half-shelter about the house.
“Never was the Hermitage without a guest,” says Buell in his Jackson biography, “and most of the time it was crowded. Jackson and his wife carried the old-fashioned Southern hospitality to an extreme. They did not wish their guests to be simply visitors, but made them temporary members of the family.”
It seems to be the unanimous and unchallenged opinion that a visitor at the Hermitage was always made to feel at home and led to believe that his visit conferred an especial pleasure on his hosts. All comers were welcome.
But Andrew Jackson did not wait for guests to come to the Hermitage. Nor were its broad doors open only to the distinguished and prosperous. A characteristic incident is told by one of his early acquaintances relative to the son of the famous Daniel Boone: “The young man had come to Nashville on his father’s business, to be detained some weeks, and had his lodgings at a small tavern towards the lower part of town. General Jackson heard of it; sought him out; found him; took him home to remain as long as his business detained him in the country, saying: ‘Your father’s dog should not stay in a tavern while I have a house.’”
The hospitality of the Hermitage not only knew no limitation on the grounds of a visitor’s prosperity or prominence, it was extended alike to friend and foe.
A son of the notorious William G. (Parson) Brownlow, a rabid Whig and bitter anti-Jackson man, relates that on one occasion in 1845 a party of East Tennessee Whigs who had been attending a convention in Nashville and were on their way home decided to stop at the Hermitage and pay their respects to the ex-President. Parson Brownlow was one of the party, and when they reached the gate he expressed some doubt as to the propriety of his entering the home of the man whom he had so vigorously and consistently denounced, but he was prevailed upon to go along with his friends. He insisted, however, that when they got inside the house he would remain in the background so as to avoid the necessity of having his name called in the general introductions. But Jackson always knew what was going on about him, and he immediately noticed that there was one of the party who had not been introduced, whereupon Brownlow was presented. “I have heard of you before,” the old General said with dry wit; but he shook his hand cordially and treated him with particular courtesy during the remainder of the call, never giving any sign that one of his guests was a man who had waged bitter warfare on him during his days of political activity.
Another similar example was afforded by the visit of Mr. Leslie Combs, a former member of Congress from Kentucky, who came to the Hermitage as a messenger from one of the sons of General Isaac Shelby, bearing a letter relating to a controversy that had sprung up between the Shelbys and Jackson. Mr. Combs arrived at the Hermitage just before dinner time, was received with the greatest courtesy, invited into the dining room to join the family at dinner, and urged to stay at the house as a guest. When he left Old Hickory himself put some apples in his saddle-bags—but, at the same time, he made an appointment with him to meet him at a certain hotel in Nashville, the next day, and when the appointment was kept General Jackson proceeded to denounce Mr. Combs for acting as his enemies’ messenger, and wound up by indulging himself in his favorite pastime of denouncing Henry Clay. As long as Mr. Combs was a guest at the Hermitage, Old Hickory’s code demanded that he be treated with punctilious politeness; but, on neutral ground, he wanted Mr. Combs to know exactly how he felt.